The last week has been taken up with the install and opening of The Bibliomancer's Dream at the South Bank Centre. I had an intense time sorting through the boxes of 6000 donated books, rather like Christmas with a few unwanted dodgy boxes of fiction but a lot of thrills with the volume of poetry and small treasures of wisdom. I got a sense of the vastness of human thought and expression that has been committed to paper…
Everyone pulled it together with great focus and style….the lighting has created a magical, womb like atmosphere. Willow and Terence used their design genius to get the mechanism working perfectly and a few other touches too….
The opening drew a lot of the south bank staff including Jude Kelly who was extremely happy and excited by the work, it seems this is the kind of project they feel restores the space to its original purpose, so I was pleased to hear that kind of feedback! There have been events going on in the space as part of the Imagine Festival and it has been buzzing. The hazards of public art have become clear as children have been testing out the robustness of the crank and spool system and a few have broken with the pressure but they are getting fixed. I would expect there to be a snagging process as the visitor count in that space is something like 500-1000 a day. I feel very honoured to have been given the ballroom space to work with and it has felt very natural, like it’s what I was always supposed to have been doing. It’s given me a sense of confidence that I can now work in major spaces like this, hopefully internationally. I really hope too that this installation can tour somehow, it is such a resource and would be so easy to store and set up in different locations. I am inviting the universe to provide the opportunity!
It seems that people are really responding to the idea of bibliomancy as a momentary access to self knowledge and playful reflection and I enjoy the feeling of having passed on a small part of my heritage in this way. Quite a few people mentioned its something that they do in their own way anyway but didn’t realize it was a cultural tradition.
I will be going up later this week with my family for some of the events – poetry and dance workshops, Gamelan day etc – and on Sunday we will be doing some stills and video documentation.
Lastly, Six Pillars to Persia, an Iranian arts online radio programme featured an interview with me on the project and my work today and it’s being repeated on Sunday 22nd 8/30pm. It’s on http://resonancefm.com (104.4fm)..click on 'Listen now'. I think It will also be archived at http://sixpillarstopersia.wordpress.com/ in case you miss it and are interested to listen.
